Would anyone play a pvp based online rpg

A few years ago i used to play minecraft with a few friends. There used to be pvp based Servers which always followed a certain scheme. There were ways to grind equipment in pve combat but the focus was on pvp battles. If you died you dropped all your items which lead to more careful and exciting gameplay. I think this concept would make a great standalone game. It would just be an open world rpg without dungeons but pve enemies and bosses and with you dropping your items if you die. I know it sounds similar to dayZ but somehow i couldnt enjoy to play dayZ.
So what do you think would there be enought people interested in that type of an mmorpg?

Guest

So what do you think would there be enought people interested in that type of an mmorpg?

Click to expand...

No, I'm myself is a fan of such type of gameplay. I like open PvP everywhere and item drop, but, unfortunately, we're minority. Most people find it very very depressive to lose something when you're killed by another player. Usually such games have really low online numbers and some of them later simply die. For some odd reason, each time I find such game, I play it for some time and later it either closes or just becomes almost dead with few players playing there.

It seems, in MMOs, players love to roleplay bots and just kill mobs in pure PvE environment without use of any brain activity. If threat is present (PKers), they start cry on game forums that evil PKers don't let them do their super-interesting farming.

Personally I never understood such people, who just want to farm mobs. And I also can't understand people who PvP in MMOs on arenas in fair conditions, because why would you play MMO then? There're shooters and MOBA for that. MMO allows you to have PvP in open world conditions, where terrain and mobs are also involved (PvPvE) - that's the main and only reason to play MMOs, but unfortunately, for some very odd reason, players tend to play MMOs just to kill mobs there and... level up, so they can kill stronger mobs to... level up and kill even more stronger mobs... what? It seems that humans have problems with logic or something.

This is the basis for a good number of games both past and present, including some of the most successful games you've heard of. I'm frankly currently building a game set on the ocean using this concept. Games like this are often referred to as "full loot" for how you can loot everything a player was carrying when they die. There's other variations on this as well, such as dropping a single item when you die so as to not hurt as much but still reward your killer and give you incentive to avoid death.

Eve Online, Darkfall, Ultima Online, and even Diablo to an extent, are all examples.

Generally it is more hardcore players that gravitate towards games with these rather harsh rules. It is common for players to move around the game in packs like wolves, for mutual protection and organized attacks. Eve Online is notorious for some of the most insanely complex player created organizations with a single player directing hundreds or more players in a single fleet battle. So it is important to include in game mechanisms for players to organize.

Some common full loot game features to consider incorporating are:
* Safe regions - where new players generally start and can play the game with limited PVP, but generally the resources you're able to gather here are significantly less valuable than the PVP areas of the map. Sometimes these are market hubs, places to heal up, etc.
* Map choke points - which become common places to find PVP fights and often are camped by players looking for kills
* Clans and Alliances - allowing for complex player organization
* Player controlled territory - often at the clan or alliance level, allow some areas of the PVP parts of the map to be owned by players for their resource gathering, and also include mechanics for attacking and defending territory as groups

This is the basis for a good number of games both past and present, including some of the most successful games you've heard of. I'm frankly currently building a game set on the ocean using this concept. Games like this are often referred to as "full loot" for how you can loot everything a player was carrying when they die. There's other variations on this as well, such as dropping a single item when you die so as to not hurt as much but still reward your killer and give you incentive to avoid death.

Eve Online, Darkfall, Ultima Online, and even Diablo to an extent, are all examples.

Generally it is more hardcore players that gravitate towards games with these rather harsh rules. It is common for players to move around the game in packs like wolves, for mutual protection and organized attacks. Eve Online is notorious for some of the most insanely complex player created organizations with a single player directing hundreds or more players in a single fleet battle. So it is important to include in game mechanisms for players to organize.

Some common full loot game features to consider incorporating are:
* Safe regions - where new players generally start and can play the game with limited PVP, but generally the resources you're able to gather here are significantly less valuable than the PVP areas of the map. Sometimes these are market hubs, places to heal up, etc.
* Map choke points - which become common places to find PVP fights and often are camped by players looking for kills
* Clans and Alliances - allowing for complex player organization
* Player controlled territory - often at the clan or alliance level, allow some areas of the PVP parts of the map to be owned by players for their resource gathering, and also include mechanics for attacking and defending territory as groups

Click to expand...

Well thank your for the information. I also used to play Darkfall a lot when i got released but a lot oft players thought that it was boring and Bad gamedesign. Same with ultima which i never played because i got told that it is worse then darkfall. I actually never heard oft Eve though..but thats because is a scifi mmo i never got interested in it. But it seems like Eve is still running so there might be a market for a similar game in a fantasy style. The big question is just if darkfall etc. Faiked because oft Bad design or because the playerbase of fantasy mmos doesnt likes to play pvp and risk based games.

You may want to look at Bartle's Taxonomy if you haven't already.
In short, "killers" like "Achievers" and "Socializers" but "Achievers" and "Socializers" generally don't like "killers". A game like DayZ is very "Killer" focused to a point where it is probably the only group of players it has and that is most likely one of the reasons it has problems sustaining its player base.

Well thank your for the information. I also used to play Darkfall a lot when i got released but a lot oft players thought that it was boring and Bad gamedesign. Same with ultima which i never played because i got told that it is worse then darkfall. I actually never heard oft Eve though..but thats because is a scifi mmo i never got interested in it. But it seems like Eve is still running so there might be a market for a similar game in a fantasy style. The big question is just if darkfall etc. Faiked because oft Bad design or because the playerbase of fantasy mmos doesnt likes to play pvp and risk based games.

Click to expand...

Ultima Online had a good run, and only stopped being the most popular MMO in the world when WOW took that title. Darkfall failed because of poor execution and deciding to abandon the game for Darkfall 2 instead of addressing the game's problems.

It is true that a full loot MMO targets a significantly smaller market than an MMO that is more forgiving.

In my humble opinion best pvp game ever made and can't believe noone mentioned it is Shadowbane. Closed down in 2011 but brought back in emulator form few years back. 2 emulators running sbemu and magicbane. Sbemu dead atm so magicbane is the better option to check it out if interested.

Full open pvp full loot(not what u wearing though). Asset destruction (can destroy another guilds stronghold which might have taken weeks to get build ).Can hit max lvl in a day(75) if you know what u doing or have a good guild.2 Downsides graphics are dated. Point and click to move (although i prefer it to wasd).Mobs are really just connon fodder.

Priests are def not supposed to be killers but can build a few variations that can hold their own.

Only game i know where you can play as a thief and actually steal someones stuff out of there bag.

Hands down best pvp mmo ever played but not everyones cup of tea.Steep learning curve hundreds of possible character builds.

Balance is more rock paper scissors. The most op builds would be Templar,huntress.scout,thief,fury. best char to play as a noob prolly be the huntress as get track and a very strong toon if built right.

I would see how many full loot PvP games are already out there. Is there really a place for an indie full lool PvP game among all the AAA titles? The market is smaller than a game that appeals to all types of players but that is fine as long as there is some way for you to get some of that market to switch from AAA games to yours.

DayZ is very "Killer" focused to a point where it is probably the only group of players it has and that is most likely one of the reasons it has problems sustaining its player base.

Click to expand...

I doubt that's the issue. Dayz is, considering its budget, one of the most broken games I've ever seen, with very little thought having been put into gamedesign and instead just adding one new system after the other (the devs basically said that themselves in a recent devblog). It's also one of the worst games I've seen in terms of "gamefeel". E.g. their first-person movement controller is terrible, melee feels terrible, all interactions are clunky as hell. A game like Squad feels a whole lot more polished and satisfying to interact with.

Eve Online, Darkfall, Ultima Online, and even Diablo to an extent, are all examples.

Click to expand...

Ultima Online had three different servers, PvE, consensual PvP, and non-consensual PvP. Difficult to know whether it's survival was due to the PvP or the fact that it catered to many different types of players through different servers. Not sure this applies to the OP's comments since he wants full PvP, no other options.

The first MUD I played was a full loot PVP and I loved it. All equipment. Most items were 'limited' and would stop spawning, so the only way to actually get good stuff was to by killing a guy who had an instance. Law was all player driven (one of the built in clans had special skills and permissions so they could enforce laws (no combat zones were player policed, etc)).

I honestly never understood MMOs when they first came out, just seemed like such a watered down concept. PvP without full loot just seemed completely pointless to me.

I am not a "killer" gamer archetype, but I do think that if you have a competitive game it should be ... competitive.

I honestly never understood MMOs when they first came out, just seemed like such a watered down concept.

Click to expand...

When MMO's came out, they were not full PvP, most of them were PvE, some even exclusively. At the very least almost all of them had servers for PvE. There were often more PvE servers than PvP due to the demand.

Even today, PvE still exists. I would not call PvE watered down, just another style of MMO that, at the time appealed to the vast number of people. PvE, especially full loot, is a totally different game really. Comparing the two is only through the lens of the player. If you like PvP, then you see PvE as watered down, but many did not see it that way.

It is a business after all and they appealed to the crowds that were out there. Shadowbane was really the beginning of a very different breed of MMO.

But in 1994 I was playing a game with really deep clan vs clan raiding systems (clans membership granted special abilities, which could be captured in clan raids), real player driven law enforcement, as well as the ability to fight directly against law enforcement (and win). The game had some really sophisticated stuff going on.

That was in 1994.

Text based MUD/MUSH/MOO were doing some really interesting stuff, a lot of which still isn't matched by graphical mmos (obviously many things are waaaay easier to do in text). That's not to say mmos are bad or anything, but as a gamer, I personally felt like early MMOs were a giant step backward from text based.

I personally felt like early MMOs were a giant step backward from text based. Giant.

Click to expand...

As a MUD player, I agree with you. It was very difficult to make that switch to graphical. So much easier to see in your head what could not at that time be portrayed on the screen.

People who have never played a MUD or any kind of text game have no idea how very detailed and deep these games could be. It is impossible to recreate in a graphical game.

Not sure I would say that those 90's games were watered down so much as they did not compare to the richness of a text game. Of course, the reason is that the technology did not exist to even get close to showing us visually what we could see through our imagination.

People who have never played a MUD or any kind of text game have no idea how very detailed and deep these games could be. It is impossible to recreate in a graphical game.

Click to expand...

When you say "deep" what exactly are you referring to? Because if you're referring to building your character the way you want to I have yet to find a MUD that comes anywhere near the depth of Dungeons & Dragons Online. It isn't for a lack of looking either. I've searched through reddit, I've searched through MUD connect, etc.

Text based MUD/MUSH/MOO were doing some really interesting stuff, a lot of which still isn't matched by graphical mmos (obviously many things are waaaay easier to do in text).

Click to expand...

Some of the is definitely the fault of graphics versus text, but some of it is the fault of an MMO simply operating at a higher frequency than a MUD. Your average MMO updates several times per second but your average MUD is typically once per second because it has to wait for the user to type their command.

Optimizating performance for a MUD is easier too. For the most part you know that if an enemy is not in the same room as the player it cannot affect the player, but with an MMO you need more complex code to do the same thing and you're having to fire it off multiple times per second.

What about projectiles? Older MMOs have projectiles that are raycasted and guaranteed to always hit, but more and more modern MMOs have projectiles that occupy space in the world and must have collision checked constantly. A MUD treats projectiles largely the same as older MMOs so that's one less complexity to deal with.

Basically the processing requirements for an MMO are steeper and thus you have far less you can do with one of them than with a MUD. At least until you start going into extreme server territory like with EVE Online.

I mean in story and other features. Character creation in a MUD is mainly a description. I played a few games and the descriptions could get very detailed. In one, when you changed clothes, the description changed. In another, I was a tailor and wrote the detailed descriptions for the clothing I made. Cool thing is that my clothes were all unique, meaning if someone saw my descriptions on a character, they knew I made those clothes. I also did ASCII art in the descriptions.

In any graphical MMO, everyone wears the same clothing, not all at the same time, but they are limited due to the cost of resources. One cannot put an unlimited number of clothing items in a graphical game as one can in text.

Most of the games I played are long gone. I have not been involved in the Mud or Mush world in a very long time, not since Firan and that is gone as well.

I keep forgetting people think of "character creation" usually in terms of appearance. I'm actually talking about setting up the character to play the way you want to play it. Being able to mix classes/skills together in ways that the developers may never have intended is completely feasible in DDO.

There are some MUDs that are class-less that offer a degree of the same flexibility but most of them end up with your character becoming a jack-of-all-trades with little to no disadvantages. With DDO there are disadvantages as well as advantages to every build.

If I want to build a melee wizard it's completely feasible, but some spells have somatic components which make them prone to failure if you're wearing bulky armor. You could remove or reduce the armor you're wearing but then you're less protected against enemy attacks.

There are some MUDs that are class-less that offer a degree of the same flexibility but most of them end up with your character becoming a jack-of-all-trades with little to no disadvantages.

Click to expand...

When I played, all of the games had classes. So you choose your class and you play. Again, I have no idea how things have changed. I am not fond of min-max games, where everyone hones their character to be the best. I remember playing far too many games where 90% of the population had exactly the same character because that was the best for combat. lol I remember that in early graphical games too.

So can't really respond to your concerns as I cared more about games where character development meant something else.

I am not fond of min-max games, where everyone hones their character to be the best.

Click to expand...

Having a highly flexible character creation system doesn't mean you have to play min-max. While there are definitely people who do that in DDO, there are just as many people who do not. We have substantial casual and roleplaying communities in addition to the min-maxers who play.

So can't really respond to your concerns as I cared more about games where character development meant something else.

Click to expand...

That's just it. Character development has meaning in DDO. If anything I'd argue it has more meaning than in the vast majority of MUDs where you are forced into a narrow playstyle that you cannot work around with a class-based system.

Skill-based MUDs aren't any better because you're only offered advantages with absolutely no disadvantages which kills roleplaying in my opinion. Being able to play a character with a crippling weakness is just as important to roleplaying.

That's just it. Character development has meaning in DDO. If anything I'd argue it has more meaning than in the vast majority of MUDs where you are forced into a narrow playstyle that you cannot work around with a class-based system.

Skill-based MUDs aren't any better because you're only offered advantages with absolutely no disadvantages which kills roleplaying in my opinion. Being able to play a character with a crippling weakness is just as important to roleplaying.

Click to expand...

I am not at all criticizing DDO or any other game. I am just stating my experience back in the days. Things have changed.

And yes, playing a character with flaws is an excellent choice for role players, if they are brave enough to try. Most of the time they prefer drama to actual role play.

The two games i played with the most character diversity were a mud turned graphical called ROE (rubies of eventide R.I.P) and Shadowbane.Rubies had a hundred classes but not too many ways to build them different . Shadowbane has only 22 classes but you can build very different characters in most of those classes (i made at least 8 completely different crusader builds ),I have played DDO maybe 8 years back?the char customization wasn't even close to shadowbane back then.

Escape from Tarkov, recently released Unity game, has an interesting implementation of the full loot thing. You should have a look at how they are doing things. It's not an MMO though.

But my impression is that MMO's market share is getting consumed by the new "MMOs", arena based PvP games with eternal progression (World of Tanks and its ilk), and straight up competitive games like mobas. MMOs are dead (the classical MMOs have never been good games imho, so, good riddance).

I think if people want competition, they play a competitive game. Counterstrike, a MOBA, Chess etc.

If they want progression with easy PVP, they'll play an "eternal progression f2p", World of Tanks etc.

But yes, there is something about full loot. No game ever gave me an adrenaline kick like Eve Online. On the hunt, jumping in, engaging... But eventually, everything took too long for my taste.

DDO used to be great too, but it's not really an MMO. To me it faded when they started to gimp grouping.
There are some other instance based action "MMOs", a rather nice one Warframe. Very fancy, but incredribly grindy and easy. And then of course the big AAA things like Destiny and The Division.

I think for an indie game, full loot is a good shot because you'll get a niche if your game is good. You're not competing with AAA, thats for sure. However, MMO aint a good shot, i think.
For single player, it's similar with permadeath - FTL wouldnt have been the same if you could just save the game. And there were many single player indie games with permadeath. So why not full loot?

DDO used to be great too, but it's not really an MMO. To me it faded when they started to gimp grouping.

Click to expand...

DDO has two primary problems. Incentives for running dungeons on high difficulties are entirely too good which led to the bulk of LFMs only being for high difficulties which discouraged new players and power creep which allowed the veterans to short man or solo content that was intended for groups.

Introducing Reaper difficulty (http://ddowiki.com/page/Reaper_difficulty) which greatly reduces self-healing, applying short timers to raising fallen party members, and so on has successfully brought grouping back into the picture though. Unless you are running on the lowest Reaper and are a seriously geared veteran you cannot effectively solo it.

Additionally they modified the death penalty to no longer apply an XP penalty to the entire party.

I loved pvp Minecraft servers with Factions plugin. You could claim amount of land depending on size of your faction, you built a fort and your valuables were safe there. However your ability to hold land diminished when you died, so if enemy faction managed to get into your base(they couldn't change blocks on your land) and overpower your friends, they could take your land and your things.

I think full loot is good, but there should be many ways to avoid dying if you are prepared, for example getting one-shotted from god-knows-where and losing everything isn't fun most of the time.

I'm really impressed by Tale of Toast, a PvP MMORPG made in Unity by just two developers. (I have no association except that it happens to use the Dialogue System.) They've been running alpha test weekends, and last weekend's alpha had over 4800 logins. In addition to PvP, they have PvE as well as safe zones and PvP choke points, which are things that Joe-Censored mentioned earlier in this thread as good PvP features. I also feel like the cute art style makes it easier to dip one's toes into PvP for the first time.

Oops...

"Unity", Unity logos, and other Unity trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Unity Technologies or its affiliates in the U.S. and elsewhere (more info here). Other names or brands are trademarks of their respective owners.